Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson, known professionally as Waldo Emerson, was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth25 May 1803
CountryUnited States of America
But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.
Economy does not consist in saving the coal, but in using the time while it burns.
He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contracted.
It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in.
The chief mourner does not always attend the funeral.
There is no one who does not exaggerate!
He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.
Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declares all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.
The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone… Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain.
Necessity does everything well.
All stealing is comparative. If you come to absolutes, pray who does not steal.
Circumstance does not make the man. Circumstance reveals man to himself.
Proportion is almost impossible to human beings. There is no one who does not exaggerate.
The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.